


Baptized in a River of Fire

by ANarrativist



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fire Powers, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rachel Amber Lives, Suspense, Thriller
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:34:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23674699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ANarrativist/pseuds/ANarrativist
Summary: The date is April 21st, 2013.Rachel hasn't answered Chloe's calls, and no one's seen her. Distraught by her apparent disappearance, Chloe begins to break down until she notices a forest fire on the horizon, bringing with it destruction and the realization that not all is well. Having seen this happen before, Chloe rushes to the rescue, only to leap headfirst into a literal firestorm.
Relationships: Rachel Amber & Chloe Price, Rachel Amber/Chloe Price
Comments: 24
Kudos: 40





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Ever since playing Life is Strange: Before the Storm, I've been enamored with the possibility of Rachel possessing powers of her own, particularly involving fire and destruction. In this AU, Rachel is kidnapped and taken to the Dark Room where these powers erupt out of instinctual self-preservation, inadvertently devastating the local area. Chloe recognizes this and rushes to her aid, but Rachel's control is tenuous at best, and the aftermath will come to haunt them.
> 
> This is my first stab at writing fanfiction, so feedback is welcome to help improve my craft! I don't know how many chapters this story will have as time goes on, depending on readership interest and how much time I have to invest. Ideally, I hope to average about one chapter a week, maybe more if the muse strikes me.

Chloe felt her throat constrict as the dial kept ringing, its monotonous tone haunting her and taunting her; Chloe’s hand cramped from how tightly she held her cellphone, but she didn’t dare let go — she was hanging from a cliff, the aged device her only handhold. Left in dreadful suspense, Chloe shifted her gaze back towards the screen, even though she already knew what she’d find. All she saw was another missed call.

There was nothing more she could do, having done everything within her power. When Rachel hadn’t answered at first, Chloe reached out to her friends, loathe as she was to speak with some of them, and later she called Rachel’s parents when none of their peers had seen her.

_No one had seen Rachel._

Something was wrong — they were well past that, actually. After Rachel’s father promised to contact the police, for once giving Chloe any reason to believe in him, all she could do was pace around her bedroom, every inch of her drawn taut and close to breaking. There came a point when Chloe couldn’t stay there anymore, feeling trapped in the house with her mother who overheard the frantic phone calls and her stepfather, frowning as though he couldn’t care less about what was happening.

What _was_ happening, however, was a question Chloe had no answer for, and that she hated most of all.

Unable to remain inside, Chloe fled the house and climbed into her truck, bitterly slamming the door behind her. There she tormented herself with more unrequited calls, paralyzed and beside herself. She could have gone anywhere, turned the ignition and left her troubles behind like she so often did, but there was no escape from the pain she felt right then. No amount of distance would excise the briars that strangled her heart, eating at her insides like a cancer, and she was riddled with them.

Later that evening, Joyce approached the truck while Chloe leaned her head against the steering wheel, having left another despondent voicemail for Rachel to find, “Why don’t you come inside, sweetie? I got a call from Rachel’s folks, and they’re doing everything they can right now.”

She spoke to her daughter as if she were a wild animal and the faintest sound might provoke her; she was only half-right, as the sight of David glowering at them from the garage did much worse to ignite Chloe’s temper than anything Joyce could have said.

Chloe flashed her mother a rattlesnake’s glare. “I’m fine out here,” she said hoarsely.

“You sure? It’s supposed to be cold out tonight, and…”

“I said I’m fine!” Seldom did Chloe snap so viciously at Joyce, but the rawness in her voice bled like a fresh wound, betraying all that her mother needed to know.

With a heartbroken expression, Joyce retreated back to the house. Chloe didn’t notice the sharp exchange between Joyce and David when she led him inside despite his stubbornness, nor did she care enough to.

Nothing good waited for Chloe in that house, breathing the same air as David, whose bullshit she especially couldn’t stand tonight. Her place was here, behind the wheel of the one thing that was hers, and hers alone, the only place where she didn’t feel utterly powerless.

The night grew longer, and Chloe’s desperation succumbed to worse angels, wounds and fears she hadn’t suffered from in years. Her only thoughts were of all those times that she and Rachel spoke of leaving Arcadia Bay, running away and starting over; how often had one promised not to leave without the other, Chloe could only guess. Those promises were made easily when they had no one but each other, but Chloe knew better than to hold anyone to their word. Some good that did her, believing the people dear to her would ever stick around.

But Rachel was different — she had to be. Chloe had to believe that something was wrong, that she had to keep trying to reach Rachel, because the alternative meant that everything she thought she knew about Rachel, everything she felt towards her, was built on a lie, a magnificent lie that Chloe had told herself from the beginning.

How many times had she called Rachel’s cell? When was the last time she had seen her?

Like feral dogs, those questions chased madly after each other inside Chloe’s head until it was all she could do not to gnash her teeth and snarl alongside them.

Her eyes blurred and ached with tears, but she resisted them; it dawned upon Chloe how selfish she was, convincing herself that something must be wrong for her own sake. The revelation hurt her more than any physical injury, that she would rather there be something wrong with Rachel possibly in danger than accept the possibility that she had simply left Chloe behind.

It didn’t feel much like crying when the tears finally fell, tumbling down Chloe’s cheeks as she trembled in her seat; it was meaner than crying, hateful towards herself and Rachel and all the others before her who had left Chloe feeling like she did that night.

Minutes felt like hours for Chloe until a faint glow swelled in the corner of her gaze. With ragged, shallow breaths and snot running from her nose, she lifted her head and saw a fearsome red and orange aura cresting the horizon, casting its light amidst smoke columns that obscured the moon. It seemed to Chloe like a wildfire as it roared into the nightly heavens, those distant flames crashing like waves against a stony shore. Then came a blistering wind that rolled down the mountainside towards Arcadia Bay, ushering the scent of burning and, to Chloe’s horror, echoes of a familiar scream that ripped through her with its rage and anguish, the likes of which she had only heard once before.

Compelled by base instinct, Chloe threw the shift into gear and barreled out of the driveway, speeding towards the outskirts of town in the direction of the flames.

*

After a short time spent driving recklessly down empty roads, the scenery that confronted her upon driving into the smoky haze was unlike anything Chloe could have imagined. She was struck by the heat that seared her skin to a rose red, the air thick with smoke from the blaze ahead of her. Chloe’s speed was reduced to a crawl as fires cascaded down the slopes on either side of the road, and her heart pounded with terror at the danger she had rushed headfirst into. She feared not for herself, but for the cries that brought her here.

When the wind shifted and the flames swelled in outrage, Chloe swore she heard them more clearly than before, the wailing cries and sobs of her angel. She smashed her fist into the truck’s horn, shouting Rachel’s name into the inferno. She could barely hear herself over the raging fires, her throat hoarse from the heat and smoke. Now more than ever, Chloe hoped that she was wrong and Rachel wasn’t lost somewhere in this nightmare. 

She began to feel lightheaded once she realized the strange manner with which the flames moved around her truck, shifting like ocean waves; more precisely, the inferno itself seemed to _breathe_ , with each inhale and exhale passing through the forest. Chloe feared for her own safety, but any thoughts of herself were dashed when a silhouette appeared in the road. Clutching the wheel with bone-white knuckles, Chloe strained to make out the feminine shape through the haze as it stumbled towards her, but her heart stopped when she finally recognized the woman in question.

Standing there was Rachel, her arms wrapped around herself to conceal her exposed form, gleaming like burnished copper against the shadows and flames; Chloe felt the urge to leap out of the truck to her aid, but hesitated upon noticing how the inferno twisted and danced around Rachel. With every step and every breath she took, the flames responded in equal measure, as though she were the eye of this hellish firestorm.

Chloe cried out Rachel’s name, deafened to her own voice by the blaze; the truck’s interior had become stifling, with Chloe feeling strangled, scarcely able to breathe. The shape of Rachel blurred with dark blots as she rushed closer, the inferno still raging around them, and Chloe wondered if this was how she would die.

She screamed her partner’s name one last time before consciousness failed her.


	2. Chapter Two

Chloe dreamed of her father more often than she dared admit, but it had been years since she saw him as vividly as she did that moment, humming and drumming his thumbs to country music playing on the radio beside him; his peaceful expression clashed with the somber lyrics he listened to, lamenting the tragedies that had taken the speakers’ lives.

_But I am still around, I'll always be around and around and around…_

The grim irony of those words broke the illusion for Chloe, and only then did the rest of her dream come into focus, the two of them sitting on the bench beneath Arcadia Bay’s lighthouse.

William kept his gaze on the horizon, while his daughter’s gazes settled on her miserable hometown below them. “We haven’t talked in a while.” 

“There’s a reason for that.”

Chloe unceremoniously turned the radio off, earning her a pitiful, disappointed expression from her father. It wasn’t long before she realized her déjà vu, which did little to help her unease; she remembered the hell she had gone through last time she saw him like this.

“Sorry, kiddo,” he said, leaning his elbows on his knees. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.”

Chloe huffed, only half-sorry about giving him a hard time. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

She remembered that week with Rachel when she last visited by her father, how difficult their experiences had been, but the thought of Rachel reminded Chloe of the present and all the fresh wounds she had suffered — the missed calls, the screams, the firestorm, all of it dancing along the fringes of her thoughts like memories of a nightmare.

William faced her with a sad, knowing look; he had been dead for years, and he still knew Chloe better than anyone else.

Before either of them got another word in, however, Chloe saw the raven perched on a tree limb behind William, the sight of it dropping a heavy stone in her stomach. It flashed its beady eyes at her notice before taking flight towards town, and Chloe followed its path as the dread she felt intensified.

Arcadia Bay had been set aflame, and how brightly it burned.

*

Everything about Chloe ached when she woke up with a start, lying on her back with her surroundings a dimly lit blur. Breathing was an act of labor, as though she had chain-smoked a pack of cigarettes, and her throat felt like she had chased it down with a bottle of cheap vodka.

She lay there for a moment, grounded by the rise and fall of her chest while she stared at a sheet metal roof, and she mused on the familiar strands of Christmas lights hanging overhead. Chloe felt the upholstery beneath her as she worked the marionette stiffness from her limbs and realized that she was in their junkyard hideout, lying on the couch that she and Rachel once liberated from a roadside curb.

Her troubled thoughts quieted as she slowly sat upright, wincing when her head started to spin. Looking around, Chloe saw everything as it was the last time she came here, which had only been a couple of days ago; the only thing out of place was the open duffel bag on the oaken cable wheel they had improvised as a table.

Alongside the bag sat a familiar radio, the sight of which left Chloe feeling that same anxious weight from her dream. Forcing herself to her feet, she held her forehead and took a step towards the table, only to lose her balance and nearly collapse — a pair of hands materialized from the darkness and caught her before she hit the ground. 

Chloe heard a voice that she had feared she never would again, sluggishly turning her gaze around to face her angel, her fallen angel.

Meeting those hazel eyes with sorrow and fury, too overcome by emotion to act beyond the same instinct that had led Chloe to her, she tossed her arms around Rachel’s neck and held her tightly, close enough to feel the feverish heat radiating from her skin.

But something was wrong when Rachel received their embrace with a rigid tension, stiffly withdrawing from Chloe’s arms moments later.

“Chloe,” Rachel said, a strange hollowness to her tone. “You should sit down.”

Whatever comfort Chloe hoped to find, she did not, fumbling in her confusion as Rachel guided her back onto the couch, her touch fleeting, almost reluctant. Only she had that kind of power over Chloe, quelling her anger before she thought to act upon it; she was too distracted by the questions running through her head to offer much resistance.

“What happened?” The rawness in Chloe’s voice ran deeper than the smoke that had filled her lungs. “Where were you?”

She began to feel overwhelmed, attacked by those memories of waiting for a call that never came, hearing her partner’s cries in the wind, and seeing her figure emerge from the flames that had almost consumed them. As much as she wanted to be angry, all she could do was rake her gaze over Rachel, afraid that she might have been burned, but there were no such marks.

The more she studied Rachel, the more Chloe realized that something was desperately wrong with how she seemed to cradle herself in her arms, dressed in spare clothes from their backup bag, her expression blank and gaze dark. She refused to meet Chloe’s gaze and retreated just out of reach when Chloe reached out for her, a wordless act dashing salt across her wounds. When Rachel risked a glance towards her partner, she saw the hurt there and pressed her lips into a thin line, guilt written plainly across her face.

Rachel took a water bottle from the duffel bag and pressed it into Chloe’s hands, as though its meager offering would repair the damage done. “You’re dehydrated. Drink this, but not too fast.”

At war with herself, her compassion pitted against her frustration, Chloe felt the latter gaining ground with every attempt Rachel made to evade her questions.

“Don’t,” Chloe said, setting the water aside. “What _happened_ , Rachel?”

She felt deserving of an explanation for the hell she had gone through tonight, emotionally and physically, and Rachel acting like a stranger in her presence only aggravated the wounds Chloe felt had been carved into her heart. 

Like a shattered mirror, however, Rachel’s jagged edges bristled at Chloe’s demands, and the menacing look that Chloe received for her impertinence chilled her to the bone.

“ _You_ don’t. I’m sorry, Chloe, but I need you not to push this right now.” Although Rachel’s coldness left Chloe on the verge of outrage, the young woman fell apart in the same breath, her eyes reddening with tears falling from her cheeks. “I can’t talk about it, not this…”

Rachel had to be the strongest person Chloe knew, and seeing her like this hurt in a manner that she least expected, realizing too late how selfish she had been — again.

There were so many questions Chloe had no answers for, and she felt as powerless as ever watching Rachel struggle to hold herself together. She turned away from Chloe and stifled a sob, an awful gasping that tore at Chloe, but she was afraid to comfort her, that she might upset Rachel further with her belligerence.

The silence felt wrong, but nothing Chloe could say felt right.

“I’m glad you’re okay.” She spoke barely above a whisper, burdened with her guilt, her shame for pressuring Rachel like she had. Although Rachel said nothing, she seemed to draw strength from those words, grounding herself somewhat.

She glanced over her shoulder at Chloe then, some small, broken piece of her desperately seeking Chloe’s gaze; all she saw was Chloe resting her head in her hands, pale knuckles grasping feebly at blue locks. 

“I’m glad you’re okay, too.” Neither of them was okay, hurting together and alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does William listen to The Highwaymen? I like to think so!
> 
> A general rule of thumb I've learned in creative writing workshops is that an author shouldn't have to explain the nuances of their work to readers, but I enjoy sharing my thoughts with you all while I'm still learning the ropes with writing fanfics. That night traumatized Rachel and Chloe both, though in vastly different ways, and they both struggle to communicate because of it. I didn't anticipate this chapter being as dark or as much of a slow burn as it became, but it seems appropriate for a story with angst and mature themes, like psychological trauma.
> 
> Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy it, and I'll see you in the next chapter!


	3. Chapter Three

By morning an eerie, ashen silence had settled over Arcadia Bay and the two young women left feeling hollow by all they experienced.

The sight of Chloe’s truck wrought fresh misery, as the vehicle was visibly scorched by the flames she had braved to find Rachel. What little paint remained had blistered, the bare metal blackened, and the interior reeked of smoke and burnt fabric. Although Chloe had no memory of what happened after falling unconscious, Rachel was absent in all but the space she occupied in the passenger seat; Chloe knew better than to waste her breath with more questions. 

Like strangers, they rode without so much as a word between them, Rachel’s only request before they left American Rust that she be taken home. In no shape to argue, Chloe obliged, her eyes shrouded with dark circles as she drove. Distantly she felt how the faux leather on the steering wheel had warped and cracked from the heat, biting uncomfortably into her hands.

As though colored by their bleakness, the sky was a smoke-stained canvas with hardly a stroke of sunlight to be found. A fine dusting of ash had accompanied the silence smothering Arcadia Bay, but no longer could Chloe make out the flames on the horizon. It was the wrong time of year for fire season, but that mattered least among her concerns, given everything that had transpired over the past twenty-four hours.

The time read half-past five when they arrived at Rachel's house, its windows dark and the rest of the neighborhood deafeningly quiet. Chloe idled her truck in the driveway, anticipating an unceremonious departure, but Rachel made no move to exit the vehicle, remaining statuesque with a thousand-yard stare.

“Chloe?” Her voice was so small, like a child afraid of the dark.

Too battered and beaten to summon her strength, Chloe merely dropped her head, closing her eyes to spare herself the hurt of laying her eyes on Rachel again.

“Yeah?”

An eternity of wounding silence followed, and she imagined those hazel eyes grazing her skin until Rachel finally spoke again, “I… I really am sorry. For everything.” She hesitated, her voice cracking like crystal glass about to shatter.

Chloe had dared hope for something, anything besides what she got. “It’s okay,” she lied, turning her head away from Rachel. “Whatever tonight was, it’s over now.”

There was no concealing the apathy that laced Chloe’s words, having resigned herself to a familiar sense of isolation; there were no answers for her, nor hope of reconciliation. The sooner she accepted that, Chloe thought, the less it would hurt — more lies she told herself to get through this nightmare yet to end.

“You should go.” There was iron in Chloe’s voice then. “Your parents are worried about you.” She forced the words past the knot in her throat, resisting the tears in her eyes.

Rachel’s breathing filled the space between them as she too fought against herself, gasping past strangled tears of her own. “Goodbye, Chloe,” Rahcel said, finally stepping out of the vehicle and closing the door behind her. 

Chloe could only watch Rachel walk away towards the house, although she refused to leave before Rachel’s parents answered the knock at their door. In those moments before they appeared, Rachel glanced back at Chloe with an agonizing look, her beautiful features devastated. Bearing witness to her heartbreak haunted Chloe, and she reversed down the driveway the moment that Rose and James answered the door, embracing their daughter, once lost but now home.

*

It was all Chloe could do not to collapse into the front yard upon returning home.

Chloe struggled to unlock the front door with her keys, her hands shaking as though she were in a snowstorm, not smeared with soot from a firestorm. For a moment it seemed the house was silent, so she made an effort to close the door quietly behind her, leaning against it as the tremors moved up her arms until her entire body shook, almost convulsing in intensity. 

She could have been stranded on a frozen lake, motionless for fear of the ice plunging her into frigid depths at the slightest movement, the metallic teeth of her keys digging into her fist.

“Where the hell have you been?”

Stepping into the hall from the kitchen, David addressed her with the bluff of a drill sergeant, his severe expression hewn from granite. Chloe merely stared at him at first, bewildered that her morning could have possibly gotten any worse.

He didn’t take her silence well. “Nothing to say for yourself? No calls, no texts. Your mother has been worried sick at night…” His barking sounded muffled to Chloe, as though a blast had deafened her to the rest of the world.

All she could do was watch as he closed the distance, his mouth moving to words that she barely understood. “I was looking for Rachel,” she said, her voice weak.

“She is not your responsibility.” David scoffed. “But you are our responsibility, which means…”

The world returned to Chloe’s sense with a vengeance. _“Shut up!”_

Her explosive response, spoken as loudly as her fatigue allowed, shocked David into silence, if only momentarily. “Just shut up! I am _nothing_ to you, and you mean even _less_ to me!” Chloe couldn’t see him for the tears in her eyes, but she stomped forward to meet him in the hallway.

“And you don’t get to talk about her, not _ever!_ ”

Amidst her black fury, Chloe only noticed glimpses of her surroundings — the confused outrage in David’s gaze, her mother’s voice sounding from the staircase. Anticipating violence from everywhere at once, Chloe lashed out wildly, pounding her fists against David when he dared to step within reach, and she kept hitting him, her shouts quickly reduced to wracking robs.

Only when she felt a pair of arms wrap around her did she shove at the man’s chest, struggling to escape his hold. Everything was falling apart again, and the last place she wanted to be was here, consoled by someone who only pretended to be her father.

However, David’s and later Joyce’s embrace proved too much to overcome, so Chloe merely collapsed into it and sobbed — for herself, for Rachel, and for everything that had gone so terribly wrong to leave her feeling more alone and broken than she ever had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while you all, and for that I apologize. It's been a difficult couple of months since I began this fanfic with little time and motivation to pursue my creative works, but they have seldom left my thoughts. Hopefully, as the summer continues I will return to writing here more regularly, both for this story and others that I hope to begin in the LiS universe.
> 
> This chapter was cathartic to write; although I haven't invested much effort into outlining this story, I can say with reasonable certainty that things may get worse before they get better. Both Chloe and Rachel are struggling to communicate with one another, and there is much going on behind the curtain canonically (and semi-canonically if you take into consideration all the BtS cut content) that contributes to their struggling relationship. However, that being said, I do hope for that sweet victory of our beloved protagonists overcoming these challenges and embracing their affections for one another.
> 
> Also, I am aware that the last scene is a modest departure from Chloe's relationship with David in canon. While I do not intend to absolve him of his flaws or the problematic elements of their relationship, I feel it is important, especially in chapters like this, that Chloe has the support she needs to heal and initiate development that will drive the narrative towards its desired outcome of her mending things with Rachel.
> 
> In other words, David should stop being a jackass and give the baby girl a hug. She deserves it.


End file.
